Today is Earth Day

Today is a day of awareness. Every day should be a day of awareness, maybe not all day, there’s time to relax as well, but you can’t enjoy without being aware and you can’t change what you are not aware of and as long as there are problems you can fix, you need to be aware of them. Earth day is a day to be aware of the problems on Earth, which means being aware of all problems.

Because, really, every day is Earth day since all known lifeforms, except the astronauts and their bacteria, spends their entire life stuck like magnets to the surface of the Earth. But then again, how many thoughts are spent on this fact every year? How many minds think of the Earth and what percentage of the time do they think of it. Right now, as always when I write on my keyboard, I think of the symmetry of the complex of billions of cells ending in ten digits that rattle away at the strange coded symbols.

Sure, not everybody are aware in this sense and they have no need or desire to be either. There is always time for existential awareness later, for now we should make time for the pressing practical problems in the world; The injustice and the suffering of today and of the future.

This post will address the two problems I want you all to be aware of: injustice and energy.

What is the injustice and the suffering of today and of the future? It’s pretty simple even if it encompasses a multitude of complex matters. All life-forms should be given an equal systematic chance of happiness. An equal systematic chance meaning the system, or society in human context, should make room for any given individual to do whatever anyone else does, insofar as they’re striving for a gain, i.e. they shouldn’t be forced to accept equality, they can’t take someone else’s right, but they can give up their own.

Inequality is one of the problems on Earth and it takes many forms. In India people born in a low caste can’t advance to a higher salary or social status. In capitalist societies the children of the rich are given many benefits from their parents being able to pay for a better life in the form of private schools and high-end private products, business and services of all kinds. In monarchies children of the monarch or nobility are born with certain power and privileges. In state societies, people born in the richest states with the most social benefits are given a better life than in other states with less social wealth. That’s inequality. Hierarchies, a pyramid-shaped world with the pharaoh on top erected on the corpses of the unfortunate.

Another problem is energy. In two forms. First, we all want machines and the best way to solve this problem is to used the materials of the Earth to capture the energy of the Sun. We do this with batteries, with plants, with wind power and solar power. Using plants is really smart, but it requires soil, which we don’t have enough of, but we can grow plants in water instead and there’s water on Earth. Of course, lack of water is another pressing matter, but we just have to clean salt water to fix that problem. Direct sunlight is also good, in the desert there is no soil or water so placing solar panels there is perfect. And the Earth is made up of rock and sand, silicon, which is what you make solar panels with, so that’s awesome. Just need to spend a lot more research on batteries and we will get rid of the bloody combustion engines.

The second form of energy need is food. Soil and water is precious, so we need to use it wisely. All food, soil and water are part of a cycle of life that goes in through the mouth and out the rear and then into a new mouth, out again and round and round forever. We are made of what we eat, we eat plants, plants eat soil, soil is worm poo, worms eat dead animals, and so it goes round and round. Today, we’re crapping all over the planet without realizing the consequences. We need to take care of our poo if we’re gonna have something to eat in the future.